


nine lives (and all the world to spend them)

by bladeCleaner



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 10:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Selina Kyle had taken the helicopter instead? </p><p>An AU where Catwoman takes the bomb out over the bay and inadvertently becomes Gotham's new saviour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nine lives (and all the world to spend them)

In the end, she doesn’t know why she does it.

She hears him say, “I can take it out over the bay,” and “no autopilot” and her first urge is to laugh, then to cry. He’s trailing blood, a trainwreck of leather and flesh and he still thinks he can pilot a nuclear bomb six miles out in the span of less than a few minutes. But there’s that determination in his eyes and he looks the same as he did sauntering back into the ruins of a deadlocked Gotham a day ago; ultimately certain of the city he wanted to save. His girlfriend just died in front of him and he’s been stabbed in the ribs, oh, and yet. And _yet._

She thinks to herself that she could let him do it. That she could watch him die again, for what feels like the hundredth time, and all she would do is stand by and watch like a helpless damsel in distress.

“You could have gone anywhere, been anything, but you came back.”

“So did you.”

“Then I guess we’re both suckers.”

She kisses him and it’s a searing, blazing kiss of cracked lips and regrets and all that they could ever say to each other in a brief moment and they pull away too quickly.

Then, before he can even register it, she’s whacked him in the head. He crumples to the ground easily, unconscious. The Commissioner rushes over to his side and looks up at her in utter disbelief. There’s no regret in her eyes, only a callous necessity. She puts her goggles on.

“Take care of him, old man,” then she breaks into a sprint for the helicopter without stopping and jumps into the backseat. She’d watched him control it in the last ride he gave her and she hopes to God it’s easy to pick up. The touchscreen panel lights up under her fingers and she ascends.

There’s icy wind on her face, whipping her hair completely perpendicular to the ground. She rises, almost crashes into a few buildings. She grips the thrust with all her might, speeding past rooftops until they smear into grey blots. She doesn’t have any time to think but inside her mind is going mad; saying that she can still jump, this is ridiculous, you don’t even love this city as much as he does. Think about how this place has treated you, this fucking _shithole_ of a place, this arrogant lie. But then she thinks about the countless children, the endless families and people in this city that are just the same as her-just struggling to go on and live in an unfair world. As much as she hates the aristocrats, she’d rather they live if the rest did, too.

She recalls John Blake. She wants to laugh again, that stolid, solemn boy. The last cop in Gotham cooperating with the last cat thief in town for information-they were never partners, only two people driven together with some moral code. Her neighbourhood was the safest; for some reason she didn’t take well to kids being beaten up in back alleys, or women being raped, or people getting shaken down. They stuck with each other for information and because it felt like they were the only two sane people left in the city. She liked Blake, despite all their necessary distance. He didn’t take any bullshit, fought hard and did the right thing-something that she lacked in spades.

Jen was fine with the way things were; smashing chandeliers in condominiums and ballrooms and cracking open champagne bottles over rooftops. She wasn’t-and what a bitter woman she was to think that she ever could be, stealing homes from those with nothing left to give. Still, she's going to miss her. She wonders what Jen'll do, with her gone. She wonders if she'll be alright. Thank hell she'd made her will before she left; in her line of business, death was something she brushed against each week.

She thinks about Bruce Wayne. _Oh, the rich don’t even die like us._ He’s broken in tons of places, alone, cast out by the world he so desperately tries to preserve again and again-yet all he does is give second chances. He almost died several times and yet he keeps coming back to save this place. There are too many things left unsaid between them and she barely knows him enough to claim him-he was never hers to keep but Gotham’s.

In the last 30 seconds over the water, she notices that the icon for autopilot is glowing. Almost absentmindedly, she presses it, if only to fulfil the wishful part of her brain that thinks somehow she can live through this-and for some reason the controls lock up under her hands. _She’s activated the autopilot._

She stares blankly for a few seconds before she realizes what that means and before she can even think about it she’s dashed out of her seat, looking for a parachute, anything, before she rips a life-vest from its compartment. She's launched herself 30 feet into the unforgiving waters before even registering it. Hurling through the air, she unzips the life vest and lands feet-first into the chilly waters. It’s honestly a shock through her nerves, the fucking cold.

She straps on the life vest and exhales through the tube, inflating it quickly. This is the coldest she’s ever felt, the water seeping in through thick leather. Still, she tells her freezing body to move, fucking move, and somehow she does even through the fog of piercing nerves and chattering teeth. Somewhere behind her the bomb goes off and it’s a shock wave of explosive energy and light and the colossal waves rise behind her like a dark omen. The force knocks her out.

\--

She wakes up, washed up on a beach somewhere, barely conscious. She leans over and coughs out litres and litres of water, it feels like, then flops on the warm sand and breathes. She’s utterly soaked down to the bone and feels mildly concussed, if not down with pneumonia, but she’s alive. 

She’s alive.

She lets herself laugh now, taking deep, gulping breaths and it's so loud, it seems to echo off the sky, and she’s laughing too hard to even care.

 

Every cat has nine lives.

**Author's Note:**

> I am just going to put this up because it's been stewing in my computer for over a month. If I put it up, it will definitely be finished. This is not a principle I adopted for ff.net, but out of respect for AO3, I'll implement it, effective now.  
> Seriously though, this is a scenario that really intrigues me and from what I'd seen of Selina, I think that she would have done it.


End file.
